before me stand,
Where the broad Ocean leans against the land,
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride.
Onward methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow,
Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore.
While the pent Ocean, rising o'er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile;
The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail,
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain,
A new creation rescued from his reign.
_The Traveller_. O. GOLDSMITH.

ITALY.

Italia! O Italia! thou who hast
The fatal gift of beauty, which became
A funeral dower of present woes and past,
On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,
And annals graved in characters of flame.
_Childe Harold, Canto IV_. LORD BYRON.

Courage, the highest gift, that scorns to bend
To mean devices for a sordid end.
Courage--an independent spark from Heaven's bright throne,
By which the soul stands raised, triumphant, high, alone.
Great in itself, not praises of the crowd,
Above all vice, it stoops not to be proud.
Courage, the mighty attribute of powers above,
By which those great in war, are great in love.
The spring of all brave acts is seated here,
As falsehoods draw their sordid birth from fear.
_Love and a Bottle: Dedication_. G. FARQUHAR.

Write on your doors the saying wise and old,
"Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere--"Be bold;
Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess
Than the defect; better the more than less;
Better like Hector in the field to die.
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly.
_Morituri Salutamus_. H.W. LONGFELLOW.

MACBETH. If we should fail,--
LADY MACBETH. We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail.
_Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 7_. SHAKESPEARE.

What man dare, I dare:
Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
The armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble.
_Macbeth, Act iii. Sc. 4_. SHAKESPEARE.

"Brave boys," he said, "be not dismayed,
For the loss of one commander,
For God will be our king this day,
And I'll be general under."
_From the Battle of the Boyne. Old Ballad_.

By how much unexpected, by so much
We must awake endeavor for defence,
For courage mounteth with occasion.
_King John, Act ii. Sc. 1_. SHAKESPEARE.

Danger knows full well
That Cæsar is more dangerous than he.
We are two lions littered in one day,
And I the elder and more terrible.
_Julius Cæsar, Act ii. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys,
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state.
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed?
Who sees him act, but envies every deed?
_Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato_. A. POPE.

Dar'st thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood,
And swim to yonder point?--Upon the word,
Accoutred as I was, I plunged in,
And fade him follow.
_Julius Cæsar, Act i. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

"You fool! I tell you no one means you harm."
"So much the better," Juan said, "for them."
_Don Juan_. LORD BYRON.

The intent and not the deed
Is in our power; and therefore who dares greatly
Does greatly.
_Barbarossa_. J. BROWN.

False Wizard, avaunt! I have marshalled my clan,
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!
They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.
_Lochiel's Warning_. T. CAMPBELL.

COURTESY.

How sweet and gracious, even in common speech,
Is that fine sense which men call Courtesy!
Wholesome as air and genial as the light,
Welcome in every clime as breath of flowers,
It transmutes aliens into trusting friends,
And gives its owner passport round the globe.
_Courtesy_. J.T. FIELDS.

In thy discourse, if thou desire to please;
All such is courteous, useful, new, or wittie:
Usefulness comes by labor, wit by ease;
Courtesie grows in court; news in the citie.
_The Church Porch_. G. HERBERT.

I am the very pink of courtesy.
_Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. 4_. SHAKESPEARE.

Would you both please and be instructed too,
Watch well the rage of shining, to subdue;
Hear every man upon his favorite theme,
And ever be more knowing than you seem.
B. STILLINGFLEET.

COWARDICE.

What is danger
More than the weakness of our apprehensions?
A poor cold part o' th' blood. Who takes it hold of?
Cowards and wicked livers: valiant minds
Were made the masters of it.
_Chances_. BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading even fools, by flatteries besieged,
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged.
_Satires: Prologue_. A. POPE.

He
That kills himself to avoid misery, fears it,
And, at the best, shows but a bastard valor.
This life's a fort committed to my trust,
Which I must not yield up, till it be forced:
Nor will I. He's not valiant that dares die,
But he that boldly bears calamity.
_Maid of Honor, Act iv. Sc. 1_. P. MASSINGER.

But Faith, fanatic Faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.
_Lalla Rookh: Veiled Prophet of Khorassan_. T. MOORE.

For fools are stubborn in their way,
As coins are hardened by th' allay;
And obstinacy's ne'er so stiff
As when 'tis in a wrong belief.
_Hudibras, Pt. III. Canto II_. S. BUTLER.

You can and you can't,
You will and you won't;
You'll be damned if you do,
You'll be damned if you don't.
_Chain (Definition of Calvinism)_. L. DOW.

They believed--faith, I'm puzzled--I think I may call
Their belief a believing in nothing at all,
Or something of that sort; I know they all went
For a general union of total dissent.
_A Fable for Critics_. J.R. LOWELL.

We are our own fates. Our own deeds
Are our doomsmen. Man's life was made
Not for men's creeds,
But men's actions.
_Lucile, Pt. II. Canto V_. LORD LYTTON (_Owen Meredith_).

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold,
Alike fantastic if too new or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
_Essay on Criticism, Pt. II_. A. POPE.

Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what they discreetly blot.
_Upon Roscommon's Translation of Horace's De Arte Poetica_.
E. WALLER.

Man yields to custom, as he bows to fate,
In all things ruled--mind, body, and estate.
_Tale III., Gentleman Farmer_. G. CRABBE.

The slaves of custom and established mode,
With pack-horse constancy we keep the road
Crooked or straight, through quags or thorny dells,
True to the jingling of our leader's bells.
_Tirocinium_. W. COWPER.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on.
_Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4_. SHAKESPEARE.

Custom calls me to 't;
What custom wills, in all things should we do 't,
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
And mountainous error be too highly heapt
For truth to o'erpeer.
_Coriolanus, Act ii. Sc. 3_. SHAKESPEARE.

Such is the custom of Branksome Hall.
_The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto I_. SIR W. SCOTT.

The tyrant custom, most grave senators,
Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war
My thrice-driven bed of down.
_Othello, Act i. Sc. 3_. SHAKESPEARE.

But to my mind,--though I am native here,
And to the manner born,--it is a custom
More honored in the breach, than the observance.
_Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 4_. SHAKESPEARE.

How troublesome is day!
It calls us from our sleep away;
It bids us from our pleasant dreams awake,
And sends us forth to keep or break
Our promises to pay.
How troublesome is day!
_Fly-By-Night_. T.L. PEACOCK.

Blest power of sunshine!--genial day,
What balm, what life is in thy ray!
To feel there is such real bliss,
That had the world no joy but this,
To sit in sunshine calm and sweet,--
It were a world too exquisite
For man to leave it for the gloom,
The deep, cold shadow, of the tomb.
_Lalla Rookh: The Fire Worshippers_. T. MOORE.

DEATH.

Death calls ye to the crowd of common men.
_Cupid and Death_. J. SHIRLEY.

A worm is in the bud of youth,
And at the root of age.
_Stanza subjoined to a Bill of Mortality_. W. COWPER.

The tall, the wise, the reverend head
Must lie as low as ours.
_A Funeral Thought, Bk. II. Hymn 63_. DR. I. WATTS.